Category Archives: Manufacturing Consent

It’s my assertion that whenever “The Enemy” wishes to enter peace talks, it’s “The West” that refuses terms and responds with violence. The CIA assassination of TTP leader Hakimullah Mehsud is the most recent example of this long standing policy of blatant aggression.

The Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif recently invited Hakimullah Mehsud, the leader of the Tehrik-i Taliban Pakistan for high level, direct peace talks. Days before the meeting and in direct violation of Pakistani sovereignty, the CIA assassinated Mehsud along with 25 other people in a drone bombing in the Federally Administered Tribal Area (FATA) of northern Pakistan.

The context for the drone strike has to raise the question of whether John Brennan, head of the CIA, is deliberately attempting to forestall any peace in the region. Why was Hakimullah Mehsud killed when he agreed to peace talks?

In June 2011 Radio 4′s Today Show had a very interesting discussion withMichael Semple, the former Deputy to the EU Special Representative for Afghanistan and a key proponent of talking to the Taliban. Here’s what he had to say on the subject:

Western military theory is based primarily on Carl von Clausewitz’steachings, what is taught in every single military academy is;

“War is not merely a political act, but also a political instrument, a continuation of political relations, a carrying out of the same by other means”

The Afghan War Logsshowed the true nature of the Afghan War, one that the media doesn’t report on.

Is it democracy that keeps western nations at war? Or the armies and the vested interests now massed behind them?

A burgeoning defence establishment, backed by large corporate interests, would one day employ so many people as to corrupt the political system. (His original draft even referred to a “military-industrial-congressional complex”.) This lobby, said Eisenhower, could become so huge as to “endanger our liberties and democratic processes”.

I wonder what Eisenhower would make of today’s America, with a military grown from 3.5 million people to 5 million. The western nations face less of a threat to their integrity and security than ever in history, yet their defence industries cry for ever more money and ever more things to do.

The cold war strategist, George Kennan, wrote prophetically:

“Were the Soviet Union to sink tomorrow under the waters of the ocean, the American military-industrial complex would have to remain, substantially unchanged, until some other adversary could be invented.”

That adversary is Islam and virtually every single country that has a large Muslim population.

The war on terror has fulfilled this prophecy fears, as Britain has followed America’s lead and sunk into a swamp of kidnapping, torture and imprisonment without trial.

The belligerent posture of the US and Britain towards the Muslim world has fostered antagonism and moderate threats in response. The bombing of extremist targets in Pakistan is an invitation for terrorists to attack us, and then a need for defence against such attack. A self fulfilling perpetual cycle of violence.

Meanwhile, the opportunity cost of appeasing the complex is astronomical.

“Every gun that is made is a theft from those who hunger”

For each long range cruise missile and bomber built a hospital ward and a classroom in Britain doesn’t get built.

As long as bullets are fired in war, there will be a company profiting from their sale, with the invention of the global war against terrorism, it provides a blank cheque opportunity for the defence industry – the military industrial complex – the scenery maybe variable – Iraq or Afghanistan – the money source remains the constant and the end result remains constant.

Yet your average Daily Mail reading Britain will be fed the myth that “they hate us for our freedom & democracy”.

It’s because our militarised media is so strong that no one will believe that it’s possible that our armed forces are capable of committing such evil acts such as breaking into people’s homes, killing them while they slept and then burning their bodies.

It becomes hard to be taken seriously if you are talking peace, yet continue to kill the people you want to bring to the negotiating table.

War is a conduit to achieve a political objective, if you have no political objective to achieve, or the remit is changed regularly as has been the case in Afghanistan, then you are in a perpetual state of war, a never ending war, that has no end game in sight.

It’s my simple assertion that the recent attacks in Nairobi are yet again another reaction that are tied to a disastrous western foreign policy in Africa, where violence simply begets violence.

What’s so fascinating about the reporting on the reactions to the War OF Terror, is the way almost all of it ignores history, as if it is a conflict happening in another time.

The recent attacks in Kenya are a case in point. In the wake of this tragic event, we have been deluged by a wave of terror experts that warn us about yet another dark mediaeval movement that harbours incomprehensible fanatics who want to destroy the West.

In our simplified media, with its sound bite driven propaganda culture, little to no context is given as to why people resort to such violent acts.

But it’s only when you start looking into “the West’s” foreign policy in East Africa over the last twenty years, that you can begin to form the context into which you can build a truer and fuller construct around.

This is yet again another reaction tied to a disastrous western foreign policy.

In the early 2000′s, the Bush administration made a disastrous decision to put all these warlords on the CIA payroll, they named them the “Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counter Terrorism” in Somalia and Kenya.

This group was used as an assassination squad.

Most terrorism experts said there were no more than a dozen individuals linked to Al-Qaeda in Somalia after 9/11.

So the CIA hires these warlords to ostensibly hunt these people down, but instead they end up murdering vast numbers of people who were Imams or religious scholars, and in some cases they would literally chop people’s heads off and bring them to their American CIA liaisons, saying “this is so and so and I’ve killed them”.

What you had was an utterly ruthless and thuggish collection of CIA sponsored warlords murdering people at the behest of the CIA.

These actions sparked a revolt against the warlords, with coalitions of religious figures across Somalia forming “The Islamic Courts Union”, which consisted of twelve regional sharia based courts that had imposed law and order in their own respective areas, coming together to form one united body, pooling their resources to overthrow the CIA warlords in Mogadishu.

When the Islamic Courts Union took Mogadishu, overthrowing the CIA backed warlords, they in turn imposed a brutal but effective form of governance in Mogadishu. Effective in the sense that it stabilised the city, crime rates plummeted and they reopened the ports.

Almost everyone apart from the Bush era administration would agree that it was the only moment since Siad Barre’s regime fell in 1991 that there had been anything resembling stability in Mogadishu. The CIA had been kicked out and the Islamic Courts Union was in control.

The US then partners with the Ethiopian dictatorship and Ethiopia launches an overt invasion into Somalia to overthrow the Islamic Courts Union.

Once the proxy war had succeeded, JSOC, America’s Joint Special Operations Command and the CIA use the cover of this overt invasion to go in and start hunting down and assassinating the leaders of the Islamic Courts Union.

The Islamic Courts Union is totally destroyed and Somalia returns to a state of lawlessness, brutality and civil war, coupled with the fact you now have American backed Ethiopians who are committing rape, murdering civilians, torturing people, setting up their own prison camps and rendering people back to Ethiopia.

In the midst of all this, a group of no bodies called Al-Shabaab, say ‘We will be the vanguard against the US backed Ethiopians, we will take up arms and we will defend Somalia, mixing the rhetoric of Bin Laden and Somali nationalism.’

The simple point is this, groups such as Al-Shabaab were non-players in Somalia, and it’s the American backed warlords and the overthrowing of local governments, such as the Islamic Courts Union, which ends up creating the very force that the Americans claim they were trying to fight in the first place.

The Henry Jackson Societies attempt to build a pro war consensus against Iran gathered further pace last week, as they pitched their case of “what it takes to prevent a nuclear Iran” to a packed committee chamber in Parliament.

As we showed in a damning expose last week, penned by Alan Mendoza, a former Co-Director of The Henry Jackson Society (HJS) In a damning indictment, Mendoza stated that the HJS are an:

“abrasively right-wing forum with an anti-Muslim tinge, churning out polemical and superficial pieces by aspiring journalists and pundits that pander to a narrow readership of extreme Europhobic British Tories, hardline US Republicans and Israeli Likudniks…..provides an insight into the obscure backstage world of Conservative politics”

HJS are a Zionist, Neo-Conservative front that are lobbying intensively at the heart of our Government to manufacture consent for an attack on Iran.

Michael Makovsky is himself an interesting character, between 2002-2006, Makovsky served as a special assistant for Iraqi energy policy in the Office of the Secretary of Defence and is a founder and president of MSM Consulting LLC, an energy and political risk consulting firm for various investment firms, focusing on markets and hedging strategies for oil, petroleum products, natural gas and electric power.

So what you have is a staunch zionist, that definitely stands to gain ideologically with Iran’s destruction and possibly earning a few bucks by hedging investments on behalf of his clients on the world oil bourse.

Just in case our Oxbridge educated political elite have forgotten about the lies and spin that led to the illegal invasion and subsequent murder of over a million innocent Iraqi’s, let’s just remind them of a few facts.

“The Israeli diplomat said that Iran was in the process of doubling its capacity at Fordow to about 1,500 centrifuges, increasing the amount of 20 per cent-enriched uranium it could produce. Uranium enriched to 20 per cent fuels Iran’s main research reactor, but it is also just below the level usable in nuclear bombs.”

Not only is any Uranium Iran has below weapons grade but, according to the new IAEA report, “Iran has today less enriched Uranium that could quickly be converted into a nuclear weapon than it had in May 2012”, the time of theIAEA’s last report GOV/2012/23 – dated 25 May 2012on the issue.

On the whole, the “nuclear Iran” scare has little to do with reality and everything to do with the Israeli, American and British desire to subjugate Iran and thereby further their global and regional domination. As was proved in the run upto the Iraq invasion, we cannot expect to read about the reality of Iran when the consensus is dictated by Israeli pro war hawks, to our imbecilic politicians or even in the majority of the western propaganda media channels.

The Neo-Con/Zionist axis of evil promotes wars that have absolutely nothing to do with Britain or the British people. Merchants of hate like the HJS piggy back onto Iran to simply promote their own agenda. They are not interested in the oft quoted “Freedom & Democracy”, peace or the idea that Western civilisation is far more advanced than the rest of the world.

The HJS operate as a “Fifth Column” in Britain, with every single conflict and war that they promote requiring the death of British troops and our taxes to fight their wars. It gives their special interest groups that fund their think tank activities, billions of dollars in extra profits received from servicing the war industry.

You can read further on the Henry Jackson Society in one my recent articles:

In my article last week “Syria, UN Resolutions & the Bigger Picture” I attempted to show the wider strands of the dirty game being played in Syria. I’ve been accosted by many who feel that I’m somehow Pro-Assad as I am lacking in my revolutionary zeal. The rather unfortunate truth of a manufactured regime change carried out by Muslims, ostensibly for the benefits of “The West” and her client states in the Middle East, is lost upon the people.

It is this exact cold hearted realism of RealPolitik that Muslims, rightly or wrongly lack. Unable to take a step back from the images of death and destruction the mass media pepper us with in their quest for humanitarian intervention (a lie exposed last week) that makes us jump in two footedly without thinking first. It is the kindness we have for our fellow Muslims that is being exploited.

That’s not me being cold hearted.

That is what the enemy sees of us.

Do I support the rebels and should Muslims in “The West”?

If we’re dealing in black and white answers, then the answer is a resounding yes.

Can we add conditions to our support?

Why not.

Crucially, do we have any say on what replaces the Assad regime?

No.

Whether you wish to accept it or not, the opposition in Syria are sponsored by the US, Britain, France, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the Muslim Brotherhood, the Syrian National Council, assorted ‘activists’ in exile, some closely linked to the British Foreign Office and the US State Department.

For the Muslim Brotherhood, the issue is revenge for Hafez al Assad’s repression of their revolt in 1982, the destruction of a secular government and perhaps the installation of a new system which they expect to dominate.

For the US and their client state Saudi Arabia – Iran, Syria and Hizbullah are three parts of the same problem. The Saud’s regard Iran as the ‘head of the snake’ and have pleaded with the US to attack it on many occasions under the Bush regime as well as the current US administration. As we’re all too aware a direct attack on Iran, would remove the cloak from the covert war already being waged and would be catastrophic to the countries waging it.

Far be it for me to tell the BBC & the western media what the fallout would be from a military attack on live nuclear reactors, not that the consequences of any “collateral damage” are ever discussed seriously. Former UN weapons inspector Hans Blix stated military strikes would be ”a path to disaster rather than a solution” before adding that Iran “posed no imminent threat”.

As I pointed out Russia & China are unwilling to back UN Security Council resolutions. Military planners in “The West” are using the second option to destabilise Syria. By bringing down the Syrian government and rupturing its strategic relationship with Iran and Hizbullah, the check mate position is in sight for the US and its Western, Gulf and of course Israeli partners.

When we take Syria in a wider context of the countries hit by the Arab Spring, we can clearly see new geopolitical boundaries being drawn. The so called “Islamist parties” (a term I dislike, but used for western discourse) have come or are likely to come to govern in Morocco, Tunisia and Egypt. Perhaps even in Libya if elections are ever held.

What parties say when they are in opposition and what they feel obliged to do when they are the ruling governments are two different propositions. Rashid Ghannushi, the leader of Tunisia’s Al Nahda party has held quiet talks with the Israelis in Washington and has indicated that Palestine will not be a priority for the new Tunisian government.

The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt is dithering over maintaining existing peace treaties with Israel; the sticking point seems to be how many billions of dollars in aid they’ll receive for selling out.

Thus far in a area undergoing rapid change, Syria is the player not playing the game, standing firm against the US and Israel on the one hand and the rising Saudi-Gulf axis on the other.

Make no mistake “The West” is on the hunt for another war in the Middle East. War is profitable business; why else do you think military supplier BAE systems announced an 18% rise in profits yesterday, amidst a global recession.

The essence of the campaign against Syria is ultimately Iran. Provocation with scientists being assassinated and the US navy on the Straits of Hormuz are a clear intention to goad Iran into retaliating and providing a pretext for the armed attack that many in Israel and the US want.

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The image used is titled “Crocodiles of Arabia” and the credit goes to Khalil Bendib

The UK, US and France have vigorously attempted to get a UN security resolution passed on the ever worsening conditions in Syria, a resolution which has been vetoed by both permanent UNSC members China & Russia.

“Some influential members of the international community unfortunately… have been undermining the opportunity for political settlement, calling for a regime change, pushing the oppositionists to power”

“sell out the Syrian people and shield a craven tyrant……any further bloodshed that flows will be on their hands”

Our very own William Hague hasn’t been that far behind his American counterpart, stating the veto:

“lets the Syrian people down, and will only encourage President Assad’s brutal regime to increase the killing”

Almost every single player involved in this unfolding tragedy are engaged in the same manner of self righteous indignation. The same players of course that were prominent in the regime change in Libya.

I’m no fan of the regimes in Damascus, Moscow or Beijing, but are they right to veto the resolution?

Yes

But not for the whiter than white reasons they might claim.

There is a far greater game being carved out in the Middle East, sadly our media (as well as Al Jazeera) is presenting it as a simple case of acrimony amidst the geo-political self interests of China and Russia, against the benevolent and kind hearted nature of UNSC members that supported the resolution.

The resolution was of course itself driven by political machinations, by strategic demands and potential gains. It is downright perfidious to suggest that the real concerns of the western political powers are with the Syrian people.

For example, last Friday’s attack on Homs was reported to have killed more than two hundred people, in reality the number was later revised to fifty five. Fifty five deaths too many, but when your only sources are “activists” that you are using to bolster another western intervention, the veracity of the information cannot be guaranteed. The apple hasn’t fallen far from the tree where the Assad’s are concerned. Basher’s father, Hafez gave the go ahead for the Hama massacre of February 1982 that left tens of thousands of Syrians dead.

Do I condemn Assad and his regime, of course I do, whole heartedly, but not for the same reasons of self interest “The West” has.

With Libya as the new template for regime change, we have to ask the questions that no one else is asking:

“In Syria, we did the signals intelligence to geo-locate the bad guys in a very denied area”

So will direct intervention like in Libya improve the situation?

These are the questions to which we should be demanding answers, yet they are not even being asked. The official narrative (same as Libya) is of the archetypal evil Arab tyrant, butchering his own people. These narratives are of course promoted by the very same people who want regime change in Syria.

Are atrocities being committed?

Yes.

Can we say conclusively who is committing them all?

The Arab League observer mission (not that it carries much gravitas, when tyrants from equally abhorrent murderous neighbouring states are doing the observing) stated it is not conclusive who is perpetrating the acts of terror in Syria. If we believe NATO and effectively the US is on the ground in Syria in some capacity, could they be responsible for some of them?

The cases of full Western invention are being made, with the now well worn ‘we cannot stand idly by’ argument that “The West” should provide the opposition with special forces training of the kind that was provided in Libya

The policy for Syria is being developed in America, of that there should be no doubt.

Therefore it’s probably best to leave you with the cold hearted realism of the realpolitik espoused by neo con and “Israel firster” Charles Krauthammer. In a recent op-ed piece in TheWashington Post the game plan for regime change in Syria and external intervention were made all too startlingly clear:

“His (Assad) fall would deprive Iran of an intra-Arab staging area and sever its corridor to the Mediterranean. Syria would return to the Sunni fold. Hezbollah, Tehran’s agent in Lebanon, could be next, withering on the vine without Syrian support and Iranian material. Hamas would revert to Egyptian patronage. At the end of this causal chain, Iran, shorn of key allies and already reeling from economic sanctions over its nuclear program, would be thrown back on its heels”

He continued:

“Force the issue. Draw bright lines. Make clear American solidarity with the Arab League against a hegemonic Iran and its tottering Syrian client. In diplomacy, one often has to choose between human rights and strategic advantage. This is a rare case where we can advance both — so long as we do not compromise with Russia or relent until Assad falls.”

Does it make it clearer now?

It’s Iran and it always has been about Iran.

After the illegal invasion of Iraq for the purpose of regime change, “The West” quickly learnt that the blowback on their own shores from a restive Muslim population would cause immense problems. So how do “The West” engineer regime change now?

Understand that whilst our politicians in the UK pontificate about the ever worsening condition of the Syrian people, the real drivers for the resolution come from the Americans.

They are not concerned about the slaughter in Syria or anywhere else in the region. Their murderous intent of reshaping the region is polished with the veneer of respectability afforded by the useful idiots in the FCO and the media right here in the UK.

For me, the motives are clear, and that’s why I will not support any UNSC resolutions bought forward by America and her cronies.

Perfidious Albion, Our government is happy to go to war all over the world in the name of freedom, liberty and democracy. Our government will extol the virtues of freedom of expression and speech, but not in the case of Press TV, where it has prevailed upon it’s poodle the so called independent media watchdog OFCOM to remove Press TV off the Sky broadcasting platform.

The hypocrisy could not be more obvious.

After all, you can have a plethora of sex channels on British television, you can even have a gay sex channel on British television and that’s no problem for David Cameron’s media regulator, OFCOM.

You can be Rupert Murdoch at the head of a media corporation which stands accused of rampaging through practically every law in the book and yet you are deemed to be a fit and proper person to operate a television station in London.

The official reason behind the decision made by Ed Richard, the current Controller of Corporate Strategy at the BBC and the head of Britain’s Office of Communications (Ofcom), was that Press TV’s editorial team was based in Tehran.

Perhaps Mr. Richard should be reminded that CNN are head quartered in the USA.

What this decision says is that you can’t be a news channel that looks at the news from a different perspective to the grim prevailing orthodoxy of Washington and London.

Some political analysts have pointed squarely at the collusion between the zionist media lobby group, Britain Israel Communications & Research Centre (Bicom) & their influence over the (state-controlled) Ofcom to ban the alternative English-language channel Press TV in the UK.

So our Government has bent over and serviced the Americans yet again, care to remind me who actually runs this country?

Do we have any sovereignty left or are we the junior partner that merrily shoe shines for his American master.

With the pressure of hostilities being ramped up against Iran on a daily basis, I am of the view that banning Press TV is simply a ploy to silence any dissenting opinion against the manufacturing of war consent. If you deny Iran the ability of expressing really what is happening in it’s country and the motives behind the forces who are preparing to attack it, then you kill any opposing opinion to the pro war hawks.

I’m pretty sure the mass media is not reporting the following, that the US never leave a country they invade, they still have bases in Germany & Japan, you know the second world war ended in 1945 right?

You don’t undertake a building project that’s larger than vatican city to leave it behind. The US embassy has everything Iraqi’s once had – clean running water, electricity, gas, security and hospitals – what they do not have, and will probably never have thanks to the invaders destruction of Iraqi infrastructure.

Whilst the US army flies off home, it’s to be replaced with another cowardly, thieving, murdering, paing and pillaging force of equal measure, the piece of shit mercenaries that were once Blackwater, then XE and now go by the name of ACADEMI.

Every bullet made, every missile fired, every gun lock and loaded is profit for the military industrial complex, it’s profit for the pro war lobbyists and the corporations.

And now the same war drums beat loudly for Israel again, this time Iran is fair game.

These lunatics really are going for another war – the dossiers, the presentations at the UN, the WMD’s, the palaces that were built on top of underground weapon facilities – the lies, the lies, the lies.

The onus, once again lies on our shoulders, do we want to see a repeat of Iraq?

Millions of us took to the streets in the run up to the 2003 invasion and it got us nowhere.

Millions of us signed petitions, and it got us nowhere.

There are only two things that this system understands and that is money and blood.

The Akh is currently away, he has not been raped and is currently working on a plantation picking bananas & has run out of PG Tips tea and is having to drink coffee. He returns sometime in January 2012

"Truth stands out clear from Error: whoever rejects evil & believes in Allah has grasped the most trustworthy hand-hold that never breaks. And Allah hears & knows all things."
(The Qur'an, Al-Baqara, 2: 256)

“Political authority & religion are kin brothers, neither would stand but by its companion; because religion is the foundation of political power & its pillar, & political power is the guardian of religion; political power is not established with a foundation & religion cannot be implemented without authority.”
- Shaykh Muhammad al-Yaqoubi

"War is not merely a political act, but also a political instrument, a continuation of political relations, a carrying out of the same by other means" - Clausewitz

"O mankind! We created you from a single (pair) of a male and a female, and made you into nations and tribes that ye may know each other (not that ye may despise each other). Verily the most honoured of you in the sight of Allah is (he who is) the most righteous of you. And Allah has full knowledge and is well acquainted (with all things)."
(The Qur'an, Al Hujurat, 49: 13)